Jenny Brown

Curvaceous: Rolf Ockert fabricated sweeping curves and used new materials in a South Coogee house with a stunning outlook. Photo: Sharrin Rees.

In Sydney

A return to rooms: "What excites me at the moment is the renewed interest in the room." David Welsh, of Chippendale practice Welsh and Major, says there is now a detectable move away from the one big, all-in "out-the-back", open-plan living room "towards more separate rooms that allow for more flexible living and cater for a range of different family types and activities".

"Arranging our houses as a series of distinct but sometimes interconnected rooms also allows less homogeneity and more personality. A series of rooms can be used for a variety of uses and makes for a more fluid, textured, creative home."

Smarter with small spaces: Newtown architect Christopher Polly admits while it's not entirely novel, he says on tight, compromised, inner-urban house sites, there is "an increasing preoccupation in achieving resourcefulness in modest spaces to enable flexibility for multiple uses". He puts a lot of thought into "the fundamental task of space-making".

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"You've got to focus on high quality space resolution in terms of plan, proportion, volume, light and ventilation." Just as important, he says, "are high quality details and finish - even with ordinary materials". The overriding question is: "how small are the clients prepared to go for new and interesting explorations of space and materials?"

Not so square: Not one for faddish trends, aiming rather for timeless architecture, Surry Hills practitioner Rolf Ockert is glad austere minimalism has been shed, "and that we're allowed to explore new materials, techniques and designs that are more tactile, visually stimulating and beautiful than ever before".

The concept drawing for two-bedroom house in O'Connor from Nathan Gibson Judd Architects.

Having already used computer-controlled CnC-routed hard foam panels for slot-patterned facades, he says "we are currently exploring the use of 3D printed elements and are enjoying using the fascinating range of timber products, wallpapers, thin metal or concrete coatings, as well as laser-cutting decorative screens".

"Three dimensional modelling is allowing us to explore softer, more dynamic shapes and to create more open, light and clever spaces than we would have before computers."

In Melbourne

Overhauling heritage: Monique Brady-Ward, of Woodwoodward Architecture, is interested in extending heritage properties in a whole new way. Instead of the usual approach of strongly differentiating old and new so that distinct architectural eras appear awkwardly sutured together, she's a proponent of what she calls "radical conservative" as "more sophisticated, playful, fresh, and harder to master than the clearly different that so often manifests as the grey, rendered box on the back of the old house".

Exemplified in a recent addition to a 1938 Surrey Hills clinker brick house that used the same material language of "rich, interesting and mottled" recycled clinkers, and hardwoods, she says those "ordinary materials were used in a extra-ordinary way".

It resulted in a coherent, contemporary home that is "modern, practical and flexible."

Beyond vanilla: In renovating and adding a rear studio to a St Kilda Victorian villa with five marble fireplaces, architect Grant Amon took the hint to go all boldly colourful from clients who told him they believed colour "does things to mood and sense" and that Victorian originals very often boasted high-key colour schemes - especially on interiors.

The studio extension, sheathed in black-stained cedar, is now "gathered together with the rendered burnt orange rear of the house and the colour-patterned stone and concrete terrace."

Inside, the scheme is even more exceptional: "Deep purple, red/orange, black and warm timber. All dark tones and rich embellished hues."

He says the completed project shows "why it's worth exploring the expressive in colour and form, rather than the polite whitewash".

In Canberra:

Nathan Judd, of Nathan Gibson Judd Architects, is punting last year's ACT regulation change allowing a secondary dwelling up to 75 square metres on a single residential house block "will have some interesting outcomes in terms of affordability, housing flexibility and the creation of smaller dwellings in all Canberra suburbs".

The new dwellings, which, he explains cannot be sold separately, should "create a bigger stock of rental housing" and should lead to some intriguing new builds.

Already, his practice has created a two-bedroom O'Connor house with a distinctive saw-toothed roof, enclosed courtyard and external kitchen and bath facilities.